CRESTA, the insurance industry organisation that provides a global standard for risk accumulation zones and industry losses, has reported that February’s Fukushima Earthquake is the largest insured loss recorded outside of the US so far in 2021, with costs estimated to be around $2.63 billion.
In a Q2 update to its CLIX Industry Loss Index, CRESTA reported that the Fukushima quake remains the only event to have exceeded the capturing threshold of a $1 billion industry loss.
However, two additional events in the quarter – the heavy snowfall event in Japan in January and the floods along the Australian East Coast in March – are also being investigated by CLIX.
Additionally, cyclones Seroja in Western Australia in April and Yaas in India in May were added to the Q2 CLIX Loss List and are currently being investigated.
The Mw7.0 Fukushima quake occurred offshore with an epicentre near the catastrophic Tohoku Earthquake of March 2011.
While the event did not generate a tsunami, damaging ground shaking affected a wide area across the prefectures of Myagi, Iwate and Fukushima.
“With only one event so far having exceeded our loss capturing trigger of USD 1bn, 2021 continues the benign trend in international Cat industry losses observed in 2020, during which no international Cat events exceeded this loss marker,” said Matthias Saenger, Technical Manager of CLIX.
“This is quite remarkable, given that in the past 21 years an industry event loss of USD 1bn was reached or exceeded on average 4.5 times per year.”
